I’ve got a long list of design and usability projects that I want to work on at the moment. The Christmas break gave me a welcome opportunity to spend a bit of time on a few of them. I wrote a little analysis of Epiphany’s download behaviour, which is something that has frequently baffled me in the past. I also reviewed the Alarm Clock applet and did some mockups for it. That was a nice thing to be able to do, since it was in response to a request for advice on the GNOME usability list. I’m hoping that we can develop that space into somewhere where that kind of thing happens more often.

One thing that these tasks made clear to me is that the design for GNOME Shell’s messaging tray is very nice indeed. Having a dedicated place to display and interact with notifications will definitely help avoid interruptions and streamline many user interactions. I’m looking forward to GNOME applications utilising this facility in the future. That’s will surely be a topic of the new version of the HIG…